JCUA in Letter to Rahm: Keep Lathrop Homes Public

JCUA speaks up in solidarity with Lathrop Homes residents in a letter to city officials, stating: Keep Lathrop Homes 100% public housing, and lease up the hundreds of units at Lathrop that are currently vacant.

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Lathrop Homes

Sefer Hasidim (a 12th-century legal text) teaches that “if a community lacks a place of worship and a shelter for the poor, it is first obligated to build a shelter for the poor.”

Since 2010, JCUA has been working directly with residents at the Lathrop Homes public housing development, to empower the voice of the residents in the debate over the future of Lathrop Homes. The future of Lathrop Homes is critical for the following reasons:

• There are tens of thousands of families in Chicago on the waiting list for public housing.
• There are tens of thousands more who could not get on the waiting list since it was full and closed.
• Even with all this tremendous need for housing in Chicago, under 150 of Lathrop’s 900 units are currently occupied. Over 750 units of housing stand vacant in this development alone.
  

Lathrop Homes Advocates Set Teach-In and Action for April 24

Residents at a Lathrop Homes protest last year.

By Holly Krig
JCUA Community Organizer

Supporting the residents of Lathrop Homes, JCUA will host a teach-in and action in collaboration with the Chicago Housing Initiative. Lathrop Homes is a Chicago Housing Authority site in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood.

We are working directly with residents at Lathrop Homes, where CHA hopes to enact a plan similar to the mixed-income development at Cabrini’s Parkside, which has forcibly displaced hundreds of families and cost the city $11.4 million in bail-out for mostly market rate housing.

Lathrop Homes Teach-In and Action
(A collaboration of Chicago Housing Initiative, Common Ground and JCUA)
Tuesday, April 24, 10 am-noon (registration begins at 9:30)
Spertus Building, 630 S Michigan Ave., 9th floor
Contact Holly Krig: holly@jcua.org or 312-663-0960, ext 111

The Teach-In, which will help us understand the policy issues from the perspective of those who live with their impact will be followed by a public action. Folks will gather outside Spertus at noon for that portion of the day; details will be announced at the Teach-In. Contact me at JCUA before Friday if you are interested in helping to organize the action.

JCUA first came together with Lathrop Homes residents when we joined the Coalition to Protect Public Housing as CHA announced its Plan for Transformation.

Recently JCUA has joined the table again with a new formation of resident leaders called Common Ground. Once again, the timing is critical. CHA plans to announce its “recalibration” of the Plan for Transformation in June.

Lathrop Homes Tashlich Action: A Teen’s Reflections

Lauren, Ariel, Or Tzedek Summer '10 and '11 participant, and Miguel Suarez, Lathrop Homes resident and community leader, at Lathrop Homes

By Lauren Bergelson
Or Tzedek Participant, Summer 2010

Over a year had passed since I was last at Lathrop Homes when I went back there for Tashlich this fall. The day was beautiful (it was Sunday) and Rebecca, another student activist and I were meeting with a Lathrop Homes resident, Sandra, before taking part in the traditional Tashlich ceremony and planning our future actions. Sandra shared poetry with us and voiced her opinion regarding the precarious status of Lathrop Homes, the affordable housing community where she lives and raised her family.

Currently the future of Lathrop Homes is up in the air as steps are being taken to transform much of the property into market-priced homes. This poses a huge problem for the many families and individuals who live and have lived in the community for decades. It was shocking to realize how unpredictable the residents’ futures are. However, it was also inspiring to see Sandra’s passion and love for her community.

I met Sandra in the summer of 2010 when I attended Or Tzedek and it was wonderful to see her again. During the brief time we met with her, I was reminded of her enthusiasm and the vivacity of the Lathrop Homes community. Oftentimes the only image of affordable housing people have is of a dangerous, dilapidated place, but Lathrop Homes looked nothing like what people expect. Later during the Tashlich ceremony we discussed the changes we would like to make this year and committed ourselves to continuing social action, specifically with Lathrop Homes in mind.

 

Or Tzedek News: Tashlich at Lathrop

Or Tzedek teens will be gathering on Oct. 2, 3-5 pm, at Lathrop Homes, one of Chicago’s oldest public housing developments, to observe Tashlich.

“In Tashlich,” says Rebecca Katz, JCUA’s teen programs coordinator, “we are encouraged to go to a large body of flowing water (like an ocean, lake or river) to reflect upon what we would like to dispose of in our behavior or way of ‘being’ in the past year, as part of our commitment to improve ourselves in the coming year. For a social justice twist on this Jewish ritual, we will cast stones in the water representing the unjust laws and obstacles to social justice, as well as changes we want to make in our personal lives.”

Find out more about this unusual observance, along with news about Or Tzedek’s upcoming blog and the “Shavua-Ton” for new teen leaders, in the newest edition of the Or Tzedek newsletter.

 

Meet JCUA’s Winter/Spring 2013 Intern Cohort

by Asaf Bar-Tura

JCUA trains interns year-round, thus developing future leaders while building organizational capacity. Read about our approach, and meet our current interns.

JCUA hosts a diverse and talented cohort of interns year-round. Our internship program has a twofold effect: first, it provides training for future social justice leaders; and second, it expands our capacity to achieve our goals.

In 2012 we had a total of 15 interns, including undergraduate, graduate and rabbinical students. This group included Jews, Muslims, and Christians, who came from across the US, as well as England and Germany.

We see internships not only as an opportunity for students to be agents of change, but also an important learning experience. Thus, we are very intentional about providing students with a stimulating environment in which they can learn, hone their professional skills and challenge themselves. We foster this environment through, individual supervision, evaluation of the internship throughout the year, as well as participation in the broader organization.

Interns are full participants in weekly staff meetings, where they have an opportunity to gain a broader understanding of JCUA’s work and strategizing. At JCUA interns develop insights related to approaching social justice through a Jewish lens, as well as strategies for interfaith partnerships.

Meet our current internship cohort:

Reporting on Recommendations for the Chicago Housing Authority

by Lauren Goldstein
JCUA intern

The Chicago public housing residents’ Central Advisory Council (CAC) recently published their recommendations to the Chicago Housing Authority. These recommendations shed light on systemic problems, and the need soar need for resident voices in the discussion about the future of public housing. JCUA’s Lauren Goldstein gives some background and explains the five main recommendations.
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Demolition at Cabrini Green

On November 30, 2012, a vast, diverse, and energetic crowd came together at the University of Illinois at Chicago Student Center to bear witness to an incredibly powerful presentation of a hopeful plan created by the Chicago public housing residents’ Central Advisory Council (CAC).

The CAC is a tenant organization recognized by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development that serves to represent public housing residents and provide resident input into the CHA’s policies via the participation of fourteen Local Advisory Council offices and seven mixed income communities.

The CAC presented their “Strategies and Recommendations Report,” which is a thorough set of recommendations for the Chicago Housing Authority to consider when moving forward with the Plan for Transformation 2.0.

This innovative report (which can be accessed here) was prepared by Lucas Greene Associates, LLC in partnership with Chicago Jobs Council, Heather D. Parish, Prim Lawrence Group, UIC Nathalie P. Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement, and We The People Media, but it was really made possible by the strong, persistent, enduring, and hardworking residents of the CHA who tirelessly work to have their voices heard, their needs represented and met, and their families, friends, and neighbors given the rights they deserve as human beings and fellow residents of Chicago.

What Happens to Displaced Public Housing Residents?

by Lauren Goldstein
Advocacy and Community Organizing Intern

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As part of JCUA’s work with the Chicago Housing Initiative’s “Lease Up!” campaign, we have been engaged in research on public housing in Chicago. Specifically, we are gathering data on where residents move when they are displaced from their homes due to demolition or redevelopment, and what those towns look like.

Given that part of the goal of the Plan for Transformation involves creating a less isolating environment for residents both racially and economically, we wanted to find out if these goals are being met. The question is: Where are Chicago’s public housing residents moving, and what kinds of opportunities exist once they arrive there.

The Facts

A study done at UIC shows that between 2000 and 2007, 55% of moves within Illinois of public housing residents occurred between the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) and the Housing Authority of Cook County (HACC).  We looked into what towns in Cook County do have public housing developments in them, so that we could then paint a better picture of what life looks like in these new communities.

Chicago’s public housing residents moved to many different towns in Cook County, and we learned that many of them, over time, have in fact become racially segregated. Many of these towns…

JCUA Joins Campaign Demanding the City Lease Up of Vacant Housing Units

by Lauren Goldstein, Community and Policy Intern
(2nd year student at the University of Chicago, Social Service Administration MA program)

As winter nears, it is evermore concerning that there are currently over 68,000 low-income families and senior citizens waiting for the Chicago Housing Authority to afford them a place to call home. What’s more, CHA has failed to lease over 2000 vacant units of public housing across Chicago. These units could, and should, be providing homes to the people who desperately need them. This is why the JCUA is a member of the Chicago Housing Initiative’s “Lease-Up!” campaign.

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Lauren Goldstein

It’s that time of year again here in Chicago – the leaves are falling, the temperatures are dropping, and darkness is falling earlier and earlier. Before winter sets in, it is of grave importance that the 68,000+ low-income families and senior citizens who have been waiting for housing from the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) are afforded a place to call home. Given the CHA’s failure to properly and efficiently address the thousands of vacant units currently shuttered across the city and allow some of the 60,000 families who remain on the wait-list (as of March 2012) to lease these units, the JCUA has decided to join the Chicago Housing Initiative’s (CHI) “Lease-Up!” campaign. We firmly believe that housing is a human right, and have chosen to take a stand.

Our Story: Or Tzedek Advanced Activism 2012

By Natasha Madorsky, Dan Lapidus, Emma Hultgren, Sophie Leff, Sarah Crotty, Elizabeth Barras, Madison Reisler, and Hannah Kaplan
Participants in the 2012 “Advanced Activism” session of Or Tzedek

(Cross-posted from the Or Tzedek blog)

Or Tzedek Advanced Activism participants, summer 2012.

While most of our peers are spending their summers at the pool or at camp, eight of us – teens from around the Chicago area (and Cleveland, Ohio) – came together to pursue social justice for the diverse communities around us.

The thing is, we all came from different communities and we all have different Jewish experiences. Some of us came from the city and some from the suburbs. Some of us go to Jewish day schools and some of us go to public schools. We represent a wide range of denominations of Judaism; we are Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Reform and Unaffiliated. Although we may be passionate about different issues, we all want the same thing- JUSTICE.

In these past eight days, we’ve all driven down streets lined with foreclosed and abandoned homes. Until Or Tzedek, we never quite realized the gravity of the issue. Several of us spent the week interning at the Humboldt Park-based organization LUCHA (Latin United Community Housing Association), which works on affordable housing and related issues within the community. Through this experience, we were able to interact with neighborhood residents and deepen our understanding of how affordable housing affects individuals and communities.

» A few spots are still open in the remaining Or Tzedek sessions July 15-22 and Aug. 5-12. Learn more and register here.

Later on in the week, we spoke with residents of Lathrop Homes, a public housing development. The restrictions placed on access to housing and the governmental neglect found in Lathrop is appalling. Institutionalized oppression tears these communities and lives apart.

Or Tzedek stands for light of justice, which is exactly what we think everyone needs to be aware of. The light is “shining” on our generation to get involved in the problems of our world. M’dor l’dor, from generation to generation, we need to create a society where everyone has what they need. Or Tzedek has given us inspiration to find different causes closer to home. Everyone can make a difference.

Make the Vision Possible, Says JCUA’s CEO

Judy Levey, JCUA’s chief executive officer, was a featured speaker at our recent “Acts of Change” event (June 20, 2012). She identifies JCUA’s main issue areas as immigration, housing, Jewish-Muslim community building and empowerment of Jewish teens. The event honored immigration attorney Kalman Resnick and Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia with the Rabbi Robert J. Marx Social Justice Award.

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Judy Levey, JCUA CEO

It is an honor to be here, following the great tradition of Rabbi Marx, Jane Ramsey, and others have led this organization. Our honorees, Kalman and Chuy are role models for social justice. They, together with our community partners, and all of you – are Actors of Change.

I would like to illustrate several of the ways JCUA, with your help, makes our world more just. These examples make clear what a group of committed and focused people can accomplish when we work together.

Proposed Crete Detention Center

Let’s begin with the dramatic recent events taking place in the Village of Crete. The Corrections Corporation of America was hoping to construct a private immigration detention center there. But the CCA has a bad track record, and their profit incentives lead them to skimp on food and health care. Private detention centers in general are notorious for violations of basic human rights.

JCUA has been working in Crete since late last year, joining forces with the Interfaith Committee for Detained Immigrants, of which we are a founding member. With our help, the residents of Crete got organized and fought to make their voices heard.

There were some setbacks, but a couple of weeks ago the Village Board of Crete voted to kill the project.

Did it happen overnight? No, it was the result of the sustained efforts of the residents of Crete, JCUA, and allies, working together, building relationships, and persevering even in the face of what looked like defeat.